At an event at its customer center in Cartersville, Georgia, on Tuesday, Komatsu launched an RC option for the D155AXi-8, making the dozer the company’s first remote controlled machine to be equipped with integrated machine control.
Powered by a 354-horsepower Komatsu SAA6D140E-7 Tier 4 Final 15.24-liter diesel engine, the D155AXi-8 RC is a large dozer designed for a variety of a applications. Komatsu intends the RC option for situations where operator safety could be endangered.
Peter Robson, Komatsu’s director of Intelligent Machine Controls, said equipping the machine with RC was done with quarry, pit or other applications in mind where concerns over high water or extremely rocky conditions may put the operator in harm’s way or just make for an extremely rough ride in the machine’s cab.
The remote control connects via radio frequency, has a range of about 100 meters and also allows for operation of the ripper.
And typically, a dozer is the last machine you’d want to operate from the sidelines since you lose the feel and sightline necessary to hitting grade.
But because this machine is equipped with Komatsu’s intelligent Machine Control technology, it can operate in automatic mode from heavy dozing all the way through to fine grading, which makes being inside the cab, in many applications, completely unnecessary.
